The first approach I had with Linux was back in 2012 when a teacher at school brought an old Ubuntu distro burned into a CD. I remember installing the OS on my current PC at the time, only to learn after that I wiped all my data.

Years passed, and my interest about Linux distro sraised in 2017, I got self diagnosed a year later as a proffesional distro hopper. I couldn’t stop wipping eveything to test the next distro. I checked DistroWatch every now and then, to see new distros or the most popular ones. Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro (even when the heavy hate train came), Garuda Linux, Arch Linux (btw), MX Linux, just to say a few I used over the years. Also discovering r/unixporn was extremely important for this matter. Over there people show their own linux rice (customization), you can get a lot of inspiration from there (here some dotfiles I made for ArcoLinux a couple years ago). Basically a never ending cycle.

The previous phase every distro hopper has to endure, has a lot of rewarding stuff.

Problem solving independency. When you distro hop, each time you face a completely different environment. Even if every distro has the Linux kernel, they are still different flavors with diverse configurations and you need to search the respective documentation in how to do stuff. For example, Arch Linux repository is broken again? Go to the AUR. Everything is there. You just browse through forums and official docs to get your solution. When iterating this process over and over you don’t only fix the problem, but you start to improve your Linux ecosystem skills by a huge amount.

Learning how to Linux. Since ricing distros requires having you to learn about Linux directories, install tools, cron jobs or starting processes with Bash, you end up in a position that you feel like you are controlling the machine with more confidence. Based on the customization you are trying to achieve, new concepts appear.

Fun. A hobbie for most people. Fast travel, fully combining themes on multiple programs, custom floating windows, customizations with different personalities and more. When we are done with our distros, we just save the .config to use it in the next OS (or create a new one, which makes more sense in my opinion). That’s where the fun begins.

Distro Hopping gives you full exposure to package managers, init systems and different OS philosophies. Obviously this is one path of learning, but always a cool way to start. Is there a way to stop Distro Hopping? Time, I guess. You will know when you are done and when inspiration strikes back again. Give it a try.